An American politician has sparked outrage after posting a deranged Christmas card style photo with his heavily armed family just days after four teenagers were killed in a school shooting.

Republican Thomas Massie posted the picture of his family on social media.

The caption read: “Merry Christmas. PS. Santa, please bring ammo”.

It came as America’s gun debate surged again after 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley allegedly carried out America’s deadliest US school shooting in 2021 last week.

Massie, who represents a Republican district in Kentucky, posted the picture of himself and six others holding firearms resembling an M60 machine gun, AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a Thompson submachine gun.

Republican Thomas Massie in a Christmas photo of his family holding gun (
Image:
via REUTRES)

Within minutes of making the post, thousands took to social media to condemn the politician.

Democratic U.S. Representative John Yarmuth, who chairs the House of Representatives Budget Committee, condemned his fellow Kentuckian’s post.

“I’m old enough to remember Republicans screaming that it was insensitive to try to protect people from gun violence after a tragedy,” Yarmuth wrote on Twitter,

apparently referring to calls for gun control laws.

“I promise not everyone in Kentucky is an insensitive a**hole,” he added.

US House Budget Committee Chairman John Yarmuth (
Image:
Getty Images)

Fred Guttenberg, an activist against gun violence, replied with a picture of his daughter, who was killed in the Parkland school shooting in Florida in 2018 and her grave.

“Since we are sharing family photos, here are mine. One is the last photo that I ever took of Jaime, the other is where she is buried because of the Parkland school shooting,” he wrote.

“The Michigan school shooter and his family used to take photos like yours as well.”

One Twitter user added: “Wow, this week that is exceptionally heartless.

Mindless. Just devoid of any soul. Do the ‘Keep Christ in Christmas’ folk see Jesus here?”

Ethan Crumbley has been accused of shooting 4 fellow students at his high school in Michigan (
Image:
Oakland County Sheriff's Office/)

“Four families lost children to a gun Christmas present, either insensitive or stupid?” another added.

“All you need is Jesus holding his weapon of choice to complete this lovely scene,” a third said.

Crumbley is accused of killing four students – Tate Myre, 16; Hana St. Juliana, 14; Madisyn Baldwin, 17; and Justin Shilling, 17 – and wounding seven others in last Tuesday’s deadly attack in Oxford, Michigan.

He was charged as an adult on 24 counts including four charges of first-degree murder and one count of terrorism.

The teenager’s parents James and Jennifer Crumbley are said to have bought him the firearm as an early Christmas present on Black Friday.

The Crumbleys were arraigned on charges of involuntary manslaughter on Saturday morning.

The parents of an alleged teenage school mass shooter James and Jennifer Crumbley

Less than four hours later, Massie posted his family photo on Twitter.

Several gun owners also slammed the politician for what they described as “gun fetishism”.

“I am a gun owner but I do not understand gun fetishism of Thomas Massie. It seems especially ethically demented this week,” tweeted Steve Metz.

There are 120 guns for every 100 Americans, according to the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey. No other nation has more civilian guns than people.

The latest figures show, more than 45,000 people were killed by gun violence in the U.S. in 2020, an increase in recent decades.

Four high school pupils died in the shooting (
Image:
Getty Images)

It is an average of more than 120 gun-related deaths per day.

It includes a 30 per cent increase in homicides from the previous year.

Between 2015 and 2019 there were 2,606 gun deaths by law enforcement alone.

The cost of gun violence is astronomical.

The U.S. spends nearly one billion dollars annually on immediate healthcare costs alone, according to the U.S. General Accountability Office.

About 44 per cent of US adults live in a household with a gun, and about one-third own one personally Massie was elected to Congress in November 2012. He is a representative of Kentucky’s fourth district.

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